Tv Ads Have Bush, Mackay Fuming

ELECTIONS 1998

TALLAHASSEE - Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Buddy MacKay made the same demand of each other Friday: Stop airing your television ad that distorts my position on anti-crime laws.

In a signal that the long-moribund governor's race may spring to life over the next 10 days, each campaign tore apart its opponent's newest commercial in an effort to squelch any momentum the ads might generate.

But with charges and countercharges flying fast, voters will have a tougher time than ever separating fact from innuendo.

``You don't want to wait for a couple of days and look at a poll and see if an ad is working,'' Bush campaign spokesman Cory Tilley said. ``You have to kill the issue before it gets any traction.''

Both sides said their latest spots will stay.

MacKay on Friday charged that a new Bush television ad, together with a Republican Party brochure mailed this week, tries to scare senior citizens.

The commercial, MacKay said, incorrectly alleges that the lieutenant governor opposed ending the early release of inmates because of prison crowding and sought to weaken the sentencing laws for criminals who attack senior citizens.

The Chiles administration supported a 1994 law that made felons serve 85 percent of their sentences, MacKay said. He also said the Bush ad implies that a 1993 sentencing law was harmful to senior citizens, when the opposite is true.

``The statute cited in this ad, the Safe Streets initiative, actually increased the sentences for those criminals who prey on our older citizens,'' MacKay said. ``I demand this ad be pulled. It is nothing but a scare tactic that preys on the greatest fears of our senior population.''

The GOP brochure highlights a 1985 MacKay vote to freeze a Social Security cost-of-living increase when he was a congressman.

``It was a preliminary amendment in the effort to balance the budget in order to save Social Security, as a matter of fact,'' Mac- Kay said. ``I was one of the ones who started this fight in the first place.''

Ironically, the latest Bush effort focusing on senior citizens contains parallels to a widely decried late campaign push by Gov. Lawton Chiles and MacKay in 1994. Then, the Democrats set up a telephone bank that called senior citizens and warned them that Jeb Bush would cut Social Security benefits. The phone calls were regarded as one of the keys to Chiles' narrow victory.

The Bush camp on Friday had complaints of its own about a new MacKay commercial that invokes the name of Tampa cop-killer Hank Earl Carr.

Bush opposes a constitutional amendment that would allow counties to decide whether to institute waiting periods and background checks for gun-show purchases. But Bush says he supports a state law that would do the same thing. The amendment, he says, would yield patchwork regulations that vary from county to county.

But mentioning Carr's name has drawn the ire of several law-enforcement organizations. The Florida Association of State Troopers, the Police Benevolent Association and the Fraternal Order of Police are all asking that the ad be pulled, saying that MacKay is manipulating the shooting for political gain. The three groups have endorsed Bush.

``We had some calls from the people in Tampa that are irritated,'' said David Murrell, Florida PBA president. ``MacKay is trying to exploit a tragedy.''

Another problem with the MacKay ad, critics say, is that Carr did not buy any of the guns used in the shooting at a gun show.

Tampa police say they know Carr frequented gun shows, but the assault weapon and rifle he owned at the time came from friends.

``Those particular guns that day, we don't have direct evidence they were purchased at a gun show,'' Tampa police spokesman Steve Cole said.